Nationwide toll due to cold wave touches 100

New Delhi, Jan 6 (UNI) The nationwide death toll due to piercing cold wave today touched 100 with three fresh deaths reported from Uttar Pradesh and one from Kashmir.

The fresh casualties in UP, which took the toll due to the cold wave sweeping the state to 80, included two deaths in Siddharthnagar and one in Sultanpur district. Gorakhpur stood the coldest with the minimum temperature at 5.8 degree.

One person was killed as the entire Kashmir valley, including Srinagar and world famous skii resort of Gulmarg experienced moderate to heavy snowfall during the past 24 hours.

Over 1000 vehicles, including 64 carrying passengers towards Srinagar, were stranded on the 300-km-long Jammu-Srinagar National Highway as the road communication between the two regions of Jammu and Kashmir remained suspended due to heavy snowfall.

Meanwhile, all the airlines destined to Srinagar remained grounded at Jammu due to bad weather conditions.

Delhiites got some respite from the sweeping cold wave with minimum temperature in the national capital rising to 7.4 degrees Celsius. The maximum temperature was recorded at 23.1 degrees.

Several incoming and outgoing flights were delayed for the fourth consecutive day today due to low visibility at both the international and domestic airports in Delhi.

In the north-west plains, the mercury further rose following cloudy weather, even as parts of Punjab and Haryana had traces of rainfall.

Amritsar, which recorded a minimum temperature of 5.2 degrees Celsius, experieced light showers early this morning.

Chandigarh, Ambala and a few other places in the plains reported traces of rain in the early hours.

The minimum rose at Ludhiana and Patiala and was recorded at 8.9 degrees and 10.7 degrees respectively.

In Himachal Pradesh, the high altitude areas in tribal district of Lahaul Spiti and Pangi and Bharmour areas in Chamba district had another spell of snowfall since last night. The entire tribal belt was under the impact of freezing cold wave conditions with Kalpa in tribal Kinnaur disrict recording the minimum temperature at minus 1.0 degrees.

The 13,050-foot high Rohtang Pass also had moderate snowfall, intensifying cold conditions in Kullu district.

Night temperatures were appreciably to markedly below normal in some parts of Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh, south Madhya Maharashtra, coastal and interior Karnataka and were below normal in some parts of Jharkhand, Konkan, Goa coastal Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and remaining parts of interior Karnataka.

They were appreciably to markedly above normal in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and were above normal in parts of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim, west Uttar Pradesh, north Madhya Maharashtra, Marathwada, Vidarbha, Chattisgarh and remaining parts of Madhya Pradesh.